Oh Canada

Ricky Willaims wants new NFLPA cannabis proposal to include removal from banned list

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By Nicki Jhabvala, The Denver Post

The NFL Players’ Association has been working on a proposal for a “less punitive approach” to the league’s marijuana policy, but the changes have yet to be presented to the NFL and details of the suggested approach still remain unknown.

Ricky Williams, the former running back and staunch cannabis advocate, said at a recent panel at Harvard that the union is proposing to strip marijuana entirely from the list of banned substances and, therefore, would no longer test players for the drug in the offseason.

“I think right now the NFL Players Association is moving to propose that cannabis is taken off the banned substances list and recognizing that it’s not an abuse problem, but it’s a health issue,” Williams said at the 2017 CannMed event last week. “And research, even though there hasn’t been that much, has come to the point where DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of our union, has finally hopped on board and said, ‘OK, there’s something … we have to look at this differently.’ And finally the union is taking a step forward with it and has the players’ backs, and I think that’s a step in the right direction, to change this antiquated punitive drug program that doesn’t help players, just punishes them. They’re trying to take care of it.”

But the union’s assistant executive director, George Atallah, told The Denver Post in a statement that that’s not necessarily the case.

“We have not yet finalized a proposal to send to the league,” Atallah wrote. “We want to take a less punitive approach to marijuana, but it won’t necessarily be removed from the banned substance list.”

The NFL tests players for substances of abuse in the offseason and prohibits them from having more than 35 nanograms per millileter of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis) in their system. If they test positive, they’re entered into an intervention drug program where they’re tested more often and face fines and/or suspension for additional failed tests.

Many players have advocated for the allowance of cannabis, both hemp extracts like cannabidiol oil that contain negligible THC and whole-plant marijuana, to help treat pain from football-related injuries. The players argue that cannabis is safer and less habit-forming than the narcotics they receive from team physicians and trainers.

Marijuana is medically legal in more than half the United States but still federally illegal as a Schedule I drug on the Controlled Substances Act. The Trump administration has vowed “greater enforcement” of federal recreational marijuana laws, but the union has remained adamant that their proposal is about the collective-bargaining agreement between with the league and not about the legal landscape.

A recent bill before Congress, however, would move cannabis to Schedule III, which would retain the rights of states that legalized medical marijuana and make it easier to research, two things that could aid the union’s push for an altered substance-abuse policy.

Cannabis activists plan smoking protest on steps of U.S. Capitol, risking arrest

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By Aaron C. Davis, The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – Dozens of activists, including some military veterans, plan to light joints Monday on the steps of the U.S. Capitol – federal land where committing the offense could draw a sentence of up to a year in jail – as part of an effort to urge a reluctant Congress to support marijuana legalization.

“Monday @ High Noon” reads a flier for the event, calling on Congress to also remove marijuana from the nation’s list of most-dangerous drugs. “Mass Civil Disobedience @ 4:20p – East Side of the US Capitol.”

Activists for the cause have flirted with arrest before, including smoking near the White House when President Barack Obama was in office. But the April 24 event marks the first time activists plan to light up squarely on federal land – and against the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol dome, where the image may be hard for federal authorities to ignore.

It also would be the first significant protest to take place under a Trump administration that has suggested there would be greater enforcement of federal drug laws prohibiting the use of recreational marijuana than under the Obama administration.

“You can only ask nicely for so long before you have to change your tactic,” said Adam Eidinger, a co-founder of the advocacy group DCMJ. Eidinger said he is making sure his 13-year-old daughter will be taken care of and that his rent is paid in case he must spend an extended period of time in jail.

“It’s come to this,” he said.

Eidinger’s primary mission is to push Congress to allow the District to fully enact a ballot measure approved by voters in 2014, to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

Seven in 10 D.C. voters backed the measure, which made possession legal, but left to District lawmakers was the task of writing rules to regulate and tax marijuana sales. Conservative House Republicans blocked local leaders from taking those steps, invoking Congress’s broad power over local District affairs to do so.

That’s left it legal for people in the District to possess marijuana, but not to legally buy or sell it, creating a gray market where people now grow it at home and barter and trade for pot.

“It’s silly,” Eidinger said. “We should legalize the activity that is already going on and give the District the ability to tax and regulate – it will raise money and make it safer for consumers.”

The U.S. Capitol Police, which has jurisdiction over the Capitol grounds, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Eidinger said he has not discussed the planned protest with police but has been in touch with authorities about another event scheduled for Thursday, a national day of pro-pot advocacy.

Eidinger’s group plans to distribute free marijuana joints to anyone with a congressional ID badge on a city street outside the Capitol. Under current law, possessing the joints on city streets is not a crime, but smoking it is.

The group has already rolled more than 1,000 joints and has dozens of volunteers ready to distribute them.

Nikolas Schiller, the other co-founder of DCMJ, said he hopes the back-to-back events will also focus congressional attention on reauthorizing a measure that shields medicinal marijuana programs from federal law enforcement actions.

The measure, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, is scheduled to expire at the end of April.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said the benefits of medical marijuana may be overhyped and suggested that he may take a tougher stand on states that legalize. On Tuesday, Sessions added that marijuana “distribution networks” including in the D.C. area, promote gang activity.

Any mass arrests from Monday’s planned protest would be left to federal prosecutors in the District to handle. Channing D. Phillips, the current prosecutor, was appointed by Obama and has said he expects to be replaced.

4/20 in the Trump era: Marijuana celebration or political rally?

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By John Ingold and Alicia Wallace, The Denver Post

There was a time — before the vendor booths, before the concerts with famous headliners, before the documentary crews and before the cannabis tour groups — when 4/20 in Denver meant a simple protest rally.

Eleven years ago, only a couple thousand people gathered in Civic Center park for the annual marijuana smokeout in defiance of state and federal laws. The rally planned for Thursday could hardly look different — 250 vendor booths, tens of thousands expected to attend and the rapper 2 Chainz scheduled to perform.

But organizers also hope that this year, especially, will bring a renewed commitment to activism.

“The rally is by definition a coming together for the common good,” said Miguel Lopez, who holds the permit for the rally and has been its most vocal advocate for years. “But we can’t be that effective if we’re not engaging a little more.”

Even by the standards of marijuana festivals, these are strange days.

On one side of the law, Colorado’s marijuana industry is booming, more states and countries are legalizing, and public support has never been stronger. On the other side, the new administration in the White House has signaled a hostility toward legal marijuana and a desire to do something to blunt its rise, meaning that legalization supporters could soon face their greatest challenge yet.

And that leaves Lopez and others in the marijuana movement with something of a problem this time around. Should they view the pot-smoker’s holiday as a chance to show strength? Or should they lie relatively low in the hopes of not attracting unwanted attention that could spur a crackdown?

“I think both sides are going to get something out of the 4/20 rallies,” said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on marijuana policy.

For the cannabis movement, Hudak said rallygoers may decide to emphasize the event’s political roots and tap into the broader protests against President Donald Trump.

“This resistance movement that has really taken off … is something that’s really going to motivate a lot of people to come out and make this a pretty significantly sized rally,” Hudak said.

For anti-marijuana groups, the 4/20 rallies will probably provide an opportunity to criticize the excesses of marijuana legalization.

“It’s something that the (U.S.) attorney general can point to and say, ‘Look at this, the state can’t even control public use,’” Hudak said.

Both approaches could have their drawbacks. Talk of a crackdown could be confronted by the sheer number of people at the rally, demonstrating just how much money and energy the federal government would have to spend to push back against legalization. Meanwhile, a raucous rally could undermine the mainstream credibility that marijuana supporters have tried to build over the past several years.

This is a tightrope that the cannabis industry is particularly familiar with. While individual stores and product companies have embraced the glamour of 4/20, the National Cannabis Industry Association, one of the industry’s lobbying groups, has traditionally shied away from the events, even as it has expressed support for marijuana consumers. Taylor West, the NCIA’s deputy director, spoke of the 4/20 events as similar to the Great American Beer Festival in producing both positive and negative images.

“In the larger context of 4/20, it’s always been a little bit of a mix, and I think it will be the same this year,” West said. “There will be some things that come out that maybe aren’t as good for the image of responsible use. But there will also be a tremendous amount of political activism.”

West said the NCIA prefers to save its own major activism push until May, when it holds annual lobbying events in Washington, D.C.

Lopez, too, said Denver 4/20 rally might not be the best place for marijuana supporters to fight the feds. For those who wish to battle Washington, Lopez had another suggestion: an annual Fourth of July “smoke-in” at the White House that he helps organize.

This year’s 4/20 rally in Denver, meanwhile, will mark the launch of a new group he is calling 420 Revolution. The group will be focused on local issues and on trying to strip away social stigma around cannabis use by encouraging one-on-one conversations in the community, Lopez said.

“I don’t see us particularly focusing on Trump,” he said. “We would be focusing more on a self-pride issue and on self-preservation as a group.”

This story was first published on DenverPost.com

Canada will legalize pot, after arresting a bunch of people for pot offences first: Neil Macdonald

“Too many Canadians,” declares the Liberal Party of Canada on its website, “end up with criminal records for possessing small amounts” of marijuana.

Enforcement of cannabis law, it continues, “traps too many Canadians in the criminal justice system for minor, non-violent offenses.”

Well said. Courageous, even. Huzzah.

So. What’s the government’s solution?

Well, it intends to continue arresting, prosecuting and criminalizing Canadians who commit this minor and non-violent offence, at least for another year or so. Young Canadians are particularly vulnerable to arrest.

Canada intends to continue arresting, prosecuting and criminalizing Canadians who commit this minor and non-violent offence. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

 

Why keep criminalizing? Good question, and the CBC’s Carol Off asked it during an interview with Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, after the government revealed its legislative plans last week. 

In response, the minister delivered this clanging non-sequitur:

“Well, we’re working on delivering our campaign promise to legalize cannabis, strictly regulate and restrict access to it with the ultimate objective to keep it out of the hands of children and the proceeds out of the hands of criminals. . . “

So Off asked again: Why another year?

Wilson-Raybould’s reply: “Well, we first of all, I completely respect the parliamentary process and will certainly monitor this piece of legislation as it as it moves through.”

If that sounds like gibberish, it’s because it is.

 

Question Period 20170410

Wilson-Raybould has not explained why the government intends to keep on criminalizing Canadians so unfairly. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

True to form, this government has written down a series of talking points, in this case, trying to make it sound like it’s cracking down on pot rather than legalizing it. And Justin Trudeau’s ministers are sticking to the messaging from party central like a child reciting Dr. Seuss.

Not once in that As It Happens interview did Wilson-Raybould explain why the government intends to keep on criminalizing Canadians so unfairly (see the Liberal party’s website statement) for another year.

Instead, literally every second time she opened her mouth, she re-spouted the line about “strictly regulating and restricting access.” Off asked eight questions. Four times, Wilson-Raybould robotically reverted to the same phrase.

‘Not a free-for-all’ 

Meanwhile, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, a parliamentary lifer who mastered the art of repetitive dronetalk sometime back in the last millennium, was out peddling more or less the same line, but with an added warning: Not only will the government continue to criminalize Canadians for what it considers a trifling offence, enforcement will be vigorous.

“Existing laws prohibiting possession and use of cannabis remain in place, and they need to be respected,” Goodale declared. “This must be an orderly transition. It is not a free-for-all.”

Why the government cannot simply decide to invoke prosecutorial and police discretion, and cease enforcing the cannabis laws it considers unjust, was not explained. Why that would necessarily be a “free for all” also went unexplained.

And Goodale went even further. All those Canadians who were prosecuted successfully in the past for this trifling, minor, non-violent offence will continue to bear the burden of a criminal record, even though this government says such prosecutions were wrong and is moving, albeit slowly, to strike down the law.

Goodale was explicit: there will be no blanket pardon. Again, no explanation. He was too busy administering stern warnings about continued enforcement, and, of course, “strictly regulating and restricting access” once the law is finally changed.

 All of this is to satisfy conservative Canadians who, even though they probably can’t explain it, continue to believe smoking pot should be a crime.

‘Addicted to prohibition’ 

Craig Jones, director of the Canadian chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says that “after 50 years of intense propaganda, we are essentially addicted to prohibition. It’s the only way we know.”

Jones points out that cannabis was criminalized by fiat in 1923, with no discussion or debate in parliament. Interestingly, he says, the first actual arrest for possession wasn’t until 1947.

That’s probably because several generations ago, Canadians regarded cannabis as an innocuous herb with some medicinal value, not a drug that turns good children into fiends.  

“Your average family doctor a century ago probably knew a great deal more about the therapeutic value of cannabis than a doctor today.”

As for the government’s strange desire to keep arresting and prosecuting Canadians for possession, Jones says: “It’s hard to extricate yourself from a policy error.”

Crossing the border

But back to Off’s interview with the justice minister. She raised another excellent question: Once cannabis is legal in Canada, what should Canadians answer when asked by U.S. border agents whether they’ve ever used it?

Because admitting it at the border can result in being barred from entering the U.S. for life, even though many states have now decriminalized cannabis, and eight states have outright legalized it.

Wilson-Raybould could have said something sensible, like: “The government of Canada will press the Trump administration to understand that after legalization in Canada, millions of Canadians will be placed in an impossible situation at the border, and we need a clear understanding between our nations.”

Government tables marijuana legislation2:23

Instead, somewhat weirdly, she started talking about what a great job Ralph Goodale is doing keeping Canada’s border safe, then strongly advised anyone crossing into the United States to tell the truth if asked about pot use. Then said she looks forward to “continuing conversations” with Jeff Sessions, her extreme-law-and-order American counterpart.

Now, it could be that Wilson-Raybould was subversively advising Canadians that if every one of us who has ever smoked pot starts declaring it at the border, it would jam traffic to a halt and the Americans, in the interest of continued commerce, would likely stop asking the damned question.

But, given that she’s a minister in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, that’s unlikely. What she probably meant to say was that marijuana would be strictly regulated and access restricted.

Because, of course, this can’t just be a free for all.

This column is part of CBC’s Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor’s blog and our FAQ.

Homeland Security Sec. Kelly says his agency, ICE, TSA will “take action” against marijuana

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By , The Cannabist Staff

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly on Tuesday called marijuana “a potentially dangerous gateway drug,” and vowed that his agency, ICE, TSA and CBP would take a hard-line stance on the substance.

In a speech at a forum entitled “Home & Away: Threats to America and the Department of Homeland Security response,” hosted by George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., Kelly spoke of the effects of cocaine and heroin trafficking before turning to cannabis.

“Let me be clear about marijuana,” he said. “It is a potentially dangerous gateway drug that frequently used, leads to the use of harder drugs.”

He went on to say, “Its use and possession is against federal law, and until the law is changed by the United States Congress, we in DHS along with the rest of the federal government, are sworn to uphold all the laws that are on the books.”

Later in his speech, Kelly called out members of Congress who have questioned the techniques of DHS: “If lawmakers do not like the laws that we are charged to enforce, that we are sworn to enforce, then they should have the courage and the skill to change those laws. Otherwise they should shut up and support the men and women on the front lines.”

Kelly’s remarks on marijuana commerce diverged sharply from his reply Sunday in an interview on “Meet the Press” to host Chuck Todd’s question about whether legalizing marijuana would help or hurt efforts to control the flow of drugs into the United States.

“Yeah, marijuana is not a factor in the drug war,” Kelly said in that interview.

He continued: “It’s three things. Methamphetamine. Almost all produced in Mexico. Heroin. Virtually all produced in Mexico. And cocaine that comes up from further south.”

In contrast, in Tuesday’s speech Kelly said, “DHS personnel will continue to investigate marijuana’s illegal pathways along the network into the United States and its distribution within the homeland, and will arrest those involved in the drug trade according to federal law. CBP (Customs and Border Protection) professionals will continue to search for marijuana at sea, air and land ports of entry and when found, take similar and appropriate actions.”

In his listing of federal agencies that will enforce federal marijuana laws, Kelly mentioned the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is under the purvue of the Department of Homeland Security. Kelly refuted recent reports that TSA doesn’t care about marijuana possession. “When marijuana is found at aviation checkpoints and baggage screening, TSA personnel will also take appropriate action,” he said.

He also said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will use marijuana possession as a factor in deportation cases. “ICE will continue to use marijuana possession, distribution and convictions as essential elements as they build their deportation, removal, apprehension packages for targeted operations against illegal aliens living in the United States. They have done this in the past, are doing it today and will continue into the future.”

According to The Associated Press, critics have argued that the agency is too heavy-handed in enforcement operations, including arresting immigrants in the U.S. illegally whose only offense is being in the country without permission.

More than 21,000 immigrants in the U.S. illegally have been arrested since President Donald Trump took office in January, compared to about 16,000 people during the same time last year. About a quarter of those arrests were immigrants who had no criminal history, according to statistics from ICE obtained by the Associated Press.

In an apparent jab at the Obama administration, Kelly said, “My people have been discouraged from doing their jobs for nearly a decade, disabled by pointless bureaucracy and political meddling.”

Kelly also took the opportunity to warn of the potential dangers of cannabis to young people. “Science tells us (cannabis) is not only psychologically addictive, but can have profound negative impact on the still-developing minds of teens and people up into their mid-20s.”

Watch John Kelly’s full speech (thoughtfully cued up by The Cannabist to his remarks on marijuana):

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Polly joined The Cannabist in December 2016 as a digital producer. She has been creating print, web and video content for a couple of decades. She returned to her home town of Denver in 2012 after living in eleven other cities in four countries, and…